First state school agrees to random drug testing

A comprehensive school in Kent is to become the first state school to introduce random drug tests.

The Abbey School in Faversham will begin testing its 960 pupils from September after parents supported the move in a consultation exercise this month.

Other comprehensives are now expected to follow suit. The Abbey School's decision comes after a call in February by Tony Blair for schools to adopt random tests. "We can't force them to do it but if heads believe they have a problem in their school, then they should be able to do random drug-testing," he said.

The urine tests will be carried out by a member of the school nursing service or a registered nurse hired from outside the school. Pupils who test positive will be offered counselling and an enforced programme of drug education. If they fail more than one test and show themselves to be persistent offenders they will face expulsion.

Peter Walker, the school's headteacher, said: "I see this as the best available form of drug-abuse prevention. This school has no greater drug problem than any other, but we are determined to stamp it out altogether. If someone is found to have taken drugs they will be given help to prevent the problem getting worse."

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Mr Walker said that although no parent would be forced to give consent for their child to be tested, he had been impressed by the strong support for his proposal. "We have written to all parents, governors and teachers and there has been a positive reaction," he said.

The Abbey School's action follows the expulsion of a pupil last month for possessing cannabis. The teenager took a cannabis cigarette into the school, which he was encouraging other pupils to try.

Lesley Temple, a mother of three who has a 15-year-old boy at Abbey School, said: "We have all got to get together to fight drugs. Random urine testing will act as a huge deterrent."

Teaching unions are divided over the merits of random testing. David Hart, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, supports the idea, but other unions think that testing will be ineffective and unworkable if parents refuse consent.

There have also been claims by some lawyers and academics that drug testing could infringe pupils' human rights, although the Government has rejected this. It believes that schools are entitled to ask parents to agree to drug tests in return for giving them a place and that this consent is sufficient to make testing legal.

Many independent schools already have a random drug testing policy. They include Eton, Marlborough, Gordonstoun, Winchester College and Sevenoaks. Fettes College in Edinburgh, the independent school at which Mr Blair was educated, also carries out random drug tests.